


On a Beach

by xwoman



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Beach Divorce (X-Men), Canon Disabled Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Panic Attacks, Paralysis, Post Beach Divorce, xmfc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 21:17:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16167143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xwoman/pseuds/xwoman
Summary: But sitting across from him in the ruined jet, holding Hanks' hand, Charles realized they’d both transformed. He’d been paralyzed and Hank had become trapped in the part of himself he hated the most. Charles felt a hot tear escape him. It fell from his face, wetting Hank’s fur.





	On a Beach

Charles’ eyes rolled from the back of his head to the front. Drifting slowly open. It was quiet. The sound of the ocean, dragging itself across the sand can be heard in the distance. It was hot. And was dark. He saw the moonlight, through shattered glass, as it poured itself gently along the beach. There is sand in his mouth and in his hair and on his skin. His body feels heavy and wrong. But as desperately as he tries he can’t remember why he feels that way. He opens and closes his eyes again. And again. And again. Laying prone on the ripped up pillows someone had placed under his body. The destroyed body of the broken jet swallowed him up. 

He flexes his hands. 

Good. He thinks to himself. Those still work. 

Next, he flexes his arms. Then he opens and closes his mouth. When he inhales he notices how it’s harder than usual but he can still manage to breathe. 

Next, he wants to wiggle his toes but realizes with a calm reluctance that he can’t. And he can’t move his feet and he can’t move his legs and he can’t really flex his abdominal muscles either. 

Actually, he can’t feel his legs. He can’t feel his legs and he can’t feel part of his stomach. 

Slowly he understood. Images slipped back into his head, feeling a lot like oil and water. Like they shouldn’t be there. Or that he didn’t want them to be. 

He opens his mouth to speak, “Hank...” Charles said in a small, uncertain voice. 

He hears movement but can’t move to see where they are coming from. The sounds of broken glass crushed beneath boots. The noise of sand and metal. 

Hank’s dark form comes into view. His fur and the moonlight mix. They are close to the same color. Dark blue and thick. He sits across from Charles, a heavy thud and a sigh. Hank flexes his shoulders and looks at his huge hands, once small and human he frightened of himself. 

“You’re awake.” He says quietly.  
“Where is everyone?” Charles questions.

Hank replied, “They’ve gone for help.”

Charles understands and nods slowly. They’d gone after help. Help for him.“What happened?” Charles asks, even though he already knew. 

Hank pauses, “Erik shot you,” he decides after a while.

“No,” Charles says, “I mean, I know. But...” there is another pause as Charles makes the effort to turn his head, “what happened to me?”

“Are you in any pain?”

Charles hums, “some.” He looks at his feet again. Trying but unable to move his legs. 

Hank looks at Charles. Looks him up and down, but mostly down and then looks nervous, “Can you feel your legs, Charles?”

Charles looks at Hank, “No,” he says, “I can’t feel anything.”

Hank nodded, understanding settling like dust.

“I can’t move anything, Hank. It’s so strange...” for a while nobody said anything, Hank was afraid to taste the word in his mouth, unsure if he should tell it like it was or hold the truth close and wait for a doctor to do it for him, But even as he thinks it he knows Charles can hear him thinking. Damn telepaths. 

Charles smiles just a little, “damn telepaths,” he agrees, closing his eyes. More time passes, “people who are paralyzed, they don’t usually get better...do they?” 

Hank bites at his lips. 

“Do they Hank?”

“Not in 1962,” Hank pauses unsure how to continue, “A few hours ago you said you could feel a part of your left leg...” another pause, “can you feel that still?”

Charles’ hand explores his left leg, numb as if it weren’t his own, “I can’t feel anything,” he repeats again, “nothing.”

“I was worried that if we moved you...and Erik ripped the bullet out...”

“Ahhh...” then a long silence in which only the ocean had something to say, “do you think it’s going to be forever?”

“The army wouldn’t help us.” Hank said, “We can’t perform neurosurgery here on this beach. I can't perform neurosurgery at all.”

Charles looked dizzily at his feet and tried to make them move. But they didn’t. From what he understood they’d never move again. He touches an area just below his rib cage.

“I can’t feel this either,” he says the realization growing on him by the second, “And nothing, absolutely nothing below here,” he says draws an imaginary line across the lower part of his stomach, “it’s a wasteland,” Charles looks distant, “and it’s forever.”

“I’m sorry Charles,” Hank says quietly. 

“It’s okay Hank.”

A thought pushes at the front of Hank’s mind. A warm and shallow thought. They left me. It’s a simple one, accompanied by a color and a dizzy sadness followed by fear.

Hank takes Charles hand and grips it in his own, “I won’t leave you, Charles. No matter what.”

Charles looks to Hank, “Even with all of this?” He makes gestures to his legs and then watches in horror as one foot slips off the seat that his laying on. A great pain overwhelms him, starting at his lower chest and exploding like a knife twisted deeper into a wound.

Charles lets out a long cry. Teeth gritted and sweat gathering on his forehead. 

Hank leaps forward and catches Charles’ leg. Setting it carefully back into place. 

“You say, ‘all this’as if you’ve transformed into a monster.” 

Charles sighed and looked at Hank. His transformation must have been incredibly painful. Rapid tissue growth, and changes to his skeleton. These changes don’t come without pain. But sitting across from him in the ruined jet, holding Hanks' hand, Charles realized they’d both transformed. He’d been paralyzed and Hank had become trapped in the part of himself he hated the most. Charles felt a hot tear escape him. It fell from his face, wetting Hank’s fur. 

“You’re not a monster Hank.” More tears came, but slowly, welling up at the edges of his eyes, Charles let his thoughts escape him. And in such a state he let them cascade, he had about as much energy to control his telepathy as he had the ability to control his legs.

Hank screwed his face up, “I am Charles, look at me. I’m the definition of a monster.” 

Charles thumbed Hank’s hand. Thoughts still rushing out of his head, colors and emotions without words to match them. Fear. Music. Pity. Confusion. He began to cry. He was vulnerable and trapped. Everything rushed out of him. Memories matched with sensation matched with expectation. 

The jet began to smell like autumn leaves, and then like flowers and then like coffee and it just went on like this. His telepathy bursting at the seams. Cold air blew and then warm air blew and then it smelled like someone had baked an apple pie. And in his head, Hank saw things. The sand went out beneath his legs and turned to snow and then to cement. The moonlight became sunlight became moonlight again. There are people and they are alone. For a moment all of Charles’ life was there and gone. It only got faster and faster and Charles’ power overwhelmed him. Then gunshots, louder than anything he’d ever heard. The sound could’ve ripped open the sky. Shot after shot until the pressure burst, and suddenly all the air had been sucked from Hank’s lungs. His whole body burned as all feeling was drawn from him like blood from a vein. Then darkness, and then slowly the sand, and the glass and the metal fell quickly back into the jet. And the ocean was poured along the shore and the moonlight was scatted across the sky. And then Charles reappeared. At first only pieces of him. Hands and shoulders, an ear, eyes, arms. His legs came last, and Hank could’ve sworn he’d seen Charles’s delicate spinal cord unravel into the sea. 

Hank took a few seconds to steady himself, there was a tightness in his head. And there was Charles, still gripping his hand, still paralyzed, and still crying. 

Charles whispered, “I’m a cripple, Hank.”

Hank took two deep breaths. Feeling the tingle of what must have been a psychic panic attack left him slowly. Charles’ ability was incredible, almost unbelievable. Powerful and beautiful and painful. His projections left Hank feeling in awe. To see so many things so quickly, or all at once. Like a river vanishing into the woods or a road at night, lit up by headlights. Telepathy tasted like snow but felt like heat. Hank reckoned he’d never seen anything like it before. The smell of flowers lingered in the air. A feeling of acceptance settling in his chest. 

Hank took Charles’ hand a gave it a squeeze, “You’re as much a cripple as I am a monster.”

Charles allowed himself a slow and weak smile, “Oh Hank...” and then, “we’re in this together you and I.” 

“Yes, Charles, yes we are.”


End file.
